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He was hit with a blast of humidity and a chorus of reprimanding shouts. “Exit?! Exit?!” Nathan both asked and demanded. Considering the kitchen was the size of a master bedroom, locating the exit should have been easy, but cooks peeled away from their sta- tions to block him while the waitress attacked from the rear, pulling him by the belt back towards the dining room. They were all shouting in Thai. Maybe they thought he was a health inspector or looking
for the bathroom. He made a move to sidestep the cooks and then, slipped. He landed hard, right on his elbow, the tile floor’s oily residue splashing his face and soaking his left side. The kitchen crew grappled to get him back on his feet, like standing upright a
tall rug in a narrow hall. It was a miracle he hadn’t capsized a scalding pot or two on the way down. His elbow burned and the left side of his body was brown and soaked like bread used to mop a greasy plate. The largest of the cooks placed a beefy scarred hand on chest. “Back door not for customers.” He pointed back through the dining room. Considering it was Nathan against four cooks, a grabby waitress and a slippery room full of knifes and skillets, he turned around like a man facing a firing squad.
Once again he took off hastily, back through the beaded curtain, nursing his brutalized elbow.
He was almost at the front door too when he heard, “Nathan?”
She said it unsurely, as if posing a question. He could have kept going, and she probably would have never have known for sure, shaken it off, and gone back to talking about bingeable TV. But her voice saying his name knocked the wind out of him. Nathan stopped just a foot shy of the door. And once he stopped, the jig was up, so he spun around with a big smile. “Hey.”
“Nathan.” Kat looked beautiful. Effortlessly beautiful. He’d been so lucky. What had he been thinking.
“Hi. Surprise. Surprise. Good to see you.”
“Your clothes. Did you fall? Why are you holding your elbow?”
“What now?” Nathan wondered if they’d seen his at- tempted escape. They must have. “They wanted to show me the kitchen. See how the sausage is made. Cause, you know, I’m such a regular. Also tennis elbow. Ha, ha.”
He was making no sense. He sounded on drugs. He
was about to run for the door when he spoke.
“Yeah we love this place.”
Nathan had been so focused on Kat and making Kat think he was doing fine that he had nearly forgotten the man across from her. Nathan was too worked up to really take in his features but he could tell he was handsome and in no way threatened. And that voice.
“Yeah we love this place.” Nathan repeated the phrase, testing it out in his own mouth. Banal enough words but to Nathan it sounded like the most offensive sen- tence in the language.
“Nathan, this is Tony.”
Ignoring Tony’s outstretched hand, Nathan wondered aloud. “I’m curious actually. How did you two hear about this place?”
“Nathan.”
“Cause you know this is one of my spots. I don’t go to Big Dominic’s or the Spaghetti Barn. Or that tapas thing. Out of respect. Out of respect for you.”
“Nathan. Please.”
“Lemme guess. You took him here? You acted like this was one of your spots. A little out of the way dis- covery of yours,” he pitched her own diabolical plot back like a detective cracking the case. “You probably scored some serious points even.”
Nathan wanted to look to Tony for confirmation but he just couldn’t. He could not.
“I’m the one who brought you here is all I’m saying.”
“Nathan. You’re being a bit proprietary, don’t you think?”
“Ok, ok. You’re right.” Nathan conceded. “I mean sure it wasn’t like our place or anything. It wasn’t even in our top 10. It was more like just a ‘too-tired-to-cook- on-a-Tuesday-lets-grab-dinner-in-our-sweatpants- place’” He said. He felt like he was gaining momen- tum, maybe getting through to her.
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